Advancing an Indigenous Forestry Professorship: Position Development and Indigenous Faculty Recruitment at Northern Arizona University

Indigenous Knowledges, cultures and traditional practices contribute to sustainability and management of the environment, but Indigenous Peoples remain highly underrepresented in professional and academic positions related to Forestry and Natural Resources. To practice inclusive Forestry education, we must diversify the composition of Forestry faculty who can bring additional disciplinary expertise and lived experiences. Building on the Northern Arizona University School of Forestry´s relationships with Tribes and Indigenous Peoples, we describe the development, recruitment, and implementation of an Indigenous Forestry professorship. Creating the position required stepping out of traditional frameworks, since no such position existed in a Society of American Foresters-accredited Forestry program at the time. We advertised for candidates in any Forestry-related discipline with interest and experience in an Indigenous context. Selected from a small but well-qualified applicant pool, the new faculty member and School leaders faced a seeming inconsistency between typical expectations of university faculty vs. the essential connection of many Indigenous Peoples to culture, ceremony, responsibility and place. Through self-advocacy of the new faculty member and collegial support focusing on the broad context of the university´s commitment to Indigenous Peoples, sufficient flexibility was found on all sides. However, recruitment of faculty is only an initial step in building and sustaining academic environments inclusive of Indigenous contexts. The continued work of supporting wayfinding for Indigenous faculty toward successful careers in STEM academia is an important broader consideration, especially given the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples and the unique political status of Tribal Nations in the USA. We share our experience, lessons we learned and recommendations for recruiting and supporting Indigenous faculty in Forestry and Related Natural Resources. We hope our story will help others who might navigate circumstances similar to those we encountered.